A protester by the name of Nick Espinosa dumps glitter on a table where GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, were signing books at a hotel in Minneapolis, Tuesday May 17, 2011. The man approached the Gingriches during the signing at a downtown Minneapolis hotel, dumped a cracker box full of confetti on the pair and said, “Feel the rainbow, Newt! Stop the hate! Stop anti-gay politics!”

Espinosa later told ABC News, “I don’t think a free will adulterer like Newt has any ground to stand on while telling others who they can and can’t love.”

On Wednesday, April 2oth, artists from art activist group Liberate Tate staged a performance in Tate Britain on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days.

A naked member of the group had an oil-like substance poured over him and lay in a fetal position on the floor in the middle of the exhibition entitled Single Form. Dedicated to the human body, Single Form is one of a series of ‘BP British Art Displays’ staged throughout the galleries of Tate Britain. The guerilla performance lasted 87 minutes— one for every day oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it in 1987 under the title Piss Christ, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion.

Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an “anti-blasphemy” campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon. For four months, it has hung in the exhibition “Je crois aux miracles”, (I Believe in Miracles), to mark 10 years of art-dealer Yvon Lambert’s personal collection in his 18th-century mansion gallery in Avignon. The show is due to end next month, but two weeks ago a concerted protest campaign began.

The Collection Lambert gallery director, Eric Mézil, said the museum would reopen with the destroyed works on show “so people can see what barbarians can do”. He said there had been a kind of “inquisition” against the art work.

right: Piss Christ by Andres Serrano after it was attacked by Christian protesters in Avignon.